


opportunity in my air

by plant_boi_potter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexual!Harry Potter, Established Relationship, Feelings, Fluff, Just boys talking about their pasts, M/M, Pizza, and their feelings, drabble - Freeform, fleeting homophobia mention, fleeting racism mention, poc!Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plant_boi_potter/pseuds/plant_boi_potter
Summary: Draco learns some things.Harry learns some things.They both learn how to live with their pasts, rather than despite them.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	opportunity in my air

Harry shifted almost imperceptibly in his seat by the fire as Draco’s diamond white hair settled in a halo on one arm of the couch. A second later, he swung his legs up too, so that the back of his knees rested against the other arm, socked feet dangling over the side. 

“Do you ever feel,” he waved his hand in a circular motion, as if that was going to ever replace what he was trying to convey. “Odd.”

“Odd?” Harry raised an eyebrow as he watched Draco grapple for the words he’d lost. 

“Like you don’t belong anywhere.”

Harry snorted, not quietly enough, apparently, because Draco moved his head towards the armchair to shoot him a glare, lips pursed in a frown. 

“Draco, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but-” Harry gestured to himself, lazily.

“Oh.” He nodded. “Right.” 

The racism conversation hadn’t exactly flown over Draco’s head so much as it had perplexed him. 

It had been a long three hours that night and Harry revelled in never having to have a conversation that exhaustingly long again. 

Until now. 

“Well… I don’t really _fit_ anywhere, if that’s what you mean.”

Draco’s eyes widened, immediately straying to the mantelpiece that held the photo of Harry, Hermione and Ron; all cackling at something just out of frame. 

“Well sure,” Harry’s mouth crinkled into a smile at the memory. “I have great friends and family-” (Draco didn’t have to ask if he meant the Weasley’s) “and you.” 

“But it’s not always been like that, remember. I’m both biracial and bisexual. And a halfblood. The Dursley’s hated me because I wasn’t Muggle enough and _you_ hated me because I wasn’t wizard enough.” There was no malice in his voice, just resignation. 

“I never really apologized for that, did I?”

“I’d feel awkward if you did.”

•••

While Draco digested the information, Harry picked at the hem of his sweater, eyes flickering back and forth from the slowly unraveling green yarn to Draco’s unrelenting grey eyes.

He didn’t really need this, he was in therapy, he’d dealt with all that. But if it helped Draco, come to terms with some things in the process, he didn’t mind raking up the past just a little more. 

It was only when he finally looked away that Draco spoke. 

“Do you understand how concerned my mother was when she found out I liked people other than girls?” There was a dry type of lilt to his voice, as if he was trying - and failing - to lighten the mood at the dismal turn in conversation.

“Concerned?” 

Harry knew about most of this - Draco spoke about his father with reckless abandon, quick and venomous. 

Harry didn’t have to think about what he meant, but Draco said it anyway. Softly, his voice cracking as he looked up at the ceiling. 

“It’s different when you love someone.”

Draco didn’t have to tell Harry how far that love stretched. Harry knew. He knew in the way that was so obvious his heart hurt a little thinking about it - the way his heart hurt now, watching Draco trace the fading ink on his forearm, lips quirked upwards in a faint, sad smile. 

Draco brought his mother flowers every Sunday and cleaned her countertops when she didn’t have the energy to haul herself into the kitchen. He’d use the killing curse if it meant keeping Narcissa Malfoy safe. 

Harry still didn’t understand. Not really.

•••

“My world has always been very black and white.” Harry said after a moment of silence. “There are good people and there are bad people.”

“I think you were the first person to make me realise there was an in between.” 

Draco’s eyes shone at this, although he fought tooth and nail with his burgeoning smile - choosing instead to take a couch cushion from its space between the back of the sofa and his ribs and hurl it at Harry’s head. 

Harry ducked, cheering triumphantly as it hit the floor with a deflated _oomph_ sound. 

“Shut up I wasn’t finished on my soap box.” Draco pulled his hands over his face in order to stifle his giggles. 

“Okay.” Harry shrugged. “Can we circle back to the part where I compared you to the Dursley’s and you just acquiesced?”

“There’s nothing to say about that.” Draco turned so his hipbone was digging into the sofa seat. “I was a bad person.”

“You’re not a bad person now.” 

“So? That doesn’t excuse anything I did back then.”

“Draco.” Harry sighed, pushing himself forward so his elbows rested on his knees. “I’m just trying to understand.”

What he wanted to understand, he wasn’t sure. Reaching out, Harry carded his fingers through Draco’s hair as an alternative to thinking.

•••

Draco lay back, letting Harry ease him into opening up. He teased at the cracks in his memory, wondering all the while whether dredging up the past was as good an idea as Harry seemed to think. 

There was just _so much_ of it. 

_So many mistakes he’d made._ He craned his neck, looking back at the photograph of his husband and his friends, Hermione’s head thrown back in unashamed laughter. _So much he could never fix._

“It’s easier to go with what’s expected of you.” Now that they’d started whatever _this_ was, he might as well carry on. 

Harry had faced his demons, he might as well do the same. “I thought I was doing them- my parents- a favour”. 

The sound Harry gave was noncommittal, and Draco leant into the sensation of curling fingertips on his scalp.

“I guess I always knew people were different but I didn’t really question any of it. The rich were born rich and the poor were born poor, that was just how the world worked. I didn’t realise anyone believed otherwise, I didn’t understand why they would. So when the war broke out I was just... mainly confused.”

“I was trapped in such a small bubble that putting myself in someone else’s robes was impossible.”

“Robes?” Harry snorted. “You don’t mean shoes?”

“No.”

He rolled his eyes at that. “Alrighty then.”

Another silence descended and Harry jumped to fill it with a matter that he considered more pressing: “Would you like to continue your tale of woe, or do you want dinner first?”

“You said you’d be home early, so I ordered pizza. It should be here in about five minutes.”

“You ordered yourself pizza? Or did you get one for me too?” 

“Don’t look at me like that.” 

Harry quirked an eyebrow as Draco blushed. 

“I got you veggie pineapple.” He leant up to kiss Harry on the nose before adding, _“you disgusting man.”_

Draco settled his head back on the sofa. “Can I continue my monologuing, now that you know there’s food on the way?”

“I look forward to it.” He didn’t really, but Draco looked more relaxed than he had in a long time. Harry reminisced on how he hadn’t looked forward to anything much after the war. 

But now, like this, he looked forward to it all, the good and the bad. Most of all he looked forward to Draco being happy. He looked forward to being alive to see it happen. 

So he sat back, letting Draco gather his thoughts again, and waited.

“Nothing was ever that bad for me.” 

Draco blinked hard before closing his eyes, considering what he wanted to say next.

“I didn’t think to question what I’d been taught when I should have and instead I stood my ground - I clung to what I knew like a raft.” 

The words _“it didn’t stop me from sinking”_ were bitter, coated in the same self-hatred Harry sometimes saw in himself - when he looked in the mirror and something wasn’t quite _right._

He brought his hand up to his forehead self-consciously and Draco reached out, just shy of touching his knuckles. Slowly, Harry entwined his fingers with Draco’s. 

“I’m not excusing myself for, well, anything, I was a malicious rat bastard - I’m just-”

Draco moved on. He knew there was nothing he could do to make up for the past. The best thing he could do was this. _Change._

He wrinkled his nose impulsively at the chuckle that thrummed through Harry’s chest at the words _rat bastard._

He supposed, thinking about it properly, his accent did make the sentence kind of amusing. 

•••

“I couldn’t stand the thought of being wrong - _God, I feel sorry for myself a lot.”_

Harry chuckled at that too, and Draco opened his eyes again. “I did!” 

He wasn’t sure what he was defending - looking at Harry laugh, the crinkles he got around his eyes, the dimple that popped deeply from his left cheek, he didn’t care. 

Draco sighed, content. 

“No! Draco!” Harry struggled against the bubbling laughter.

“What!”

By this point Harry had given up. He pointed at the window, shaking slightly, hiccuping twice as he gulped air back into his lungs. 

The pizza delivery boy was young, probably seventeen, his mouth twisted in an annoyed scowl as rain dripped from the ends of his hair. 

“Oh! Oh, shit.” 

Draco left Harry draped over the chesterfield as he went to retrieve the pizza from a, now very wet, delivery boy, apologising profusely up until he shut the door.

“Pizza?”

“Pizza.”

**Author's Note:**

> It’s the middle of the night but I was thinking about therapudic!drarry


End file.
